Grocery Store Gimmicks @Solsticepublish

You have to give them credit.  Grocery stores have tried various things over the years to try to get us to buy at their particular establishment.  When I was younger I can remember the store my mother went to having a point system.  You received a certain number of points for every purchase.  When you collected enough points, you traded them in on a piece of tableware.  Being a young boy I failed to see the allure of the prize.  People, it would seem, really like “Free” things and this program was no exception.  In spite of numerous large purchases, I believe the only thing we every earned was a butter dish.  To my mother’s last day I don’t believe we ever used it.  When I moved to Michigan, double-coupons were all the rage.  If you had a coupon, the store would double its value as long as it was not over fifty cents.  This sounded like a great idea.  We always bought the Sunday paper and would clip any coupons we thought we might remotely use.  Then we would go to the store and the troubles would set in.  Many of the products we had coupons for were new and were not yet on the shelves. Many of the coupons for products in the store were for fifty-five cents off and therefore would not double.  Coupons quickly changed to having shorter and lifespans.  Before long you had less than two weeks to use the coupon or else it would expire.  Coupons were great but they were never on the items on sale.  I think the grocery stores planned it that way.  The problem with coupons is that you can’t live on the products you have coupons for.  Seriously, how many shampoo and conditioner sets, toothbrushes or pain relievers does a person need?  Even if the coupon is for food, you are only buying parts of a meal.  If you want something like meat, there is no coupon for that.  All the same, we religiously used our coupons as well as possible and looked for the ever elusive dollar off double coupon ads which came along every so often.  It wasn’t until we moved to Nebraska that double coupons made sense.  They didn’t have them out here.  If you had a coupon for a certain amount off, that was what you received.  The astonishing thing was that the food was less expensive here.  It turns out in places where they double coupons; they also jack up the price of food.  That means if you are not one of the lucky people to have the right coupon, you are actually paying MORE for a product because of the coupons.  The concept worked for the stores in Michigan because most people didn’t have a coupon for everything and then they would get their margin.  The latest trick in the grocery store playbook is the discount on gas scheme.  There are two ways of doing it.  With the first you receive one penny off per gallon of gas at their gas station for every ten dollars you spend on groceries.  You can bet that’s built into the price.  The second method is to only have discounts on gas if you buy certain items.  Maybe they have five cents off on two boxes of pancake mix.  The problems are, 1) you only need one box and 2) the brand you usually buy is fifty cents cheaper per box.  Then you have to do the math in your head to determine if it is worth buying.  The only ways to beat the system are to have a coupon for that product or to have them price match a different store where it is on sale.  Deep down, though, is that drive to save on gas.  There’s always a gimmick to get you in the store.  One way or another, they get their money.